The issue here isn't even about free speech; it's about reverse engineering.
It is NOT illegal (even by the DMCA, as I understand it) to reverse-engineer an encryption scheme for the intent of playing the content on an alternate player device. It is only illegal to reverse-engineer an encryption scheme if the intent is to permit copying. Again, IANAL, so correct me if I'm wrong.
So, the defense's job should be to prove three
points beyond a reasonable doubt:
- That 2600 thoroughly investigated the
potential illegality of the content of
the DeCSS code before reposting it.
- That to the best of 2600's knowledge, the
purpose of DeCSS was not to copy discs but
to permit playback on Linux, so they could
only believe it was not a violation of any
law to repost the code.
- That to the best of 2600's knowledge, DeCSS
was written using legal reverse-engineering
technique, again meaning that DeCSS was not
illegal to their knowledge and thus reposting
the code was not illegal either.
If certain content is deemed classified, a corporate secret, an improperly reverse-engineered implementation, or is somehow otherwise illegal, then it is a publisher's duty to investigate the legality of that content before publishing it. As long as 2600 reviewed the content, reviewed the law, and saw nothing to indicate that the content was problematic, then they should not be held responsible for reposting the code. And until a court of law judges that DeCSS itself is indeed a violation of some kind of law, 2600 (and any other publication) should be free to continue reposting the code.
Unforunately, the majority of the public IS unbelievably stupid--just look at how many of them fall for FUD, think George W. Bush or Al Gore are great people, can't be bothered to learn to program their VCRs, believe in horoscopes, and don't even know what the electoral college is. Those of us who actually AREN'T unbelievably stupid feel offended (as we ought to!) when people assume we are all stupid; however, the majority of people in the world ARE unbelievably stupid so it comes as no surprise to me that there are no public uproars over genuinely important issues, numerous public uproars over hyped non-issues, and general fear and paranoia about anything new.
There are many smart postings that blow this guy's argument away, but they won't be read by the business people who read his column. If you want to enlighten the right people, send e-mail to the journal that published it, or submit your own column in response. Be polite, and provide undeniable factual evidence (not loyalist statements of grandeur) to knock down his argument.
Don't assume that this journal is techno-savvy; they may not pay respect to e-mails, so send them hard copies and faxes as well.
Slashdot isn't required reading for business people and politicians, so we've got to carry these threads out to the public. Debating among ourselves may be fun for us, but it doesn't educate the general population.
I work for Microsoft and I frequently work from home over DSL via a VPN connection. Does this mean that @Home users who want to connect via VPN to their offices to do work will now be prohibited from doing so? I can't imagine this will help the @Home business, since most people I know who have broadband are only willing to fork out the money because they have some business-related need for it.
People need to be motivated in order to produce, and people will direct their efforts toward satisfying their highest-priority motivations.
Remember the triangular diagram of a human being's needs that many of us were taught in gradeschool? Humans have a desire for food, clothing and shelter, sex and relationships, entertainment, and THEN maybe below all those lies the need to do noble things such as contribute to humankind.
In fact, for most people, the basic needs are NEVER "met"... people just keep wanting more and more and MORE of the same crap, even when it's obvious that they've already got more than they need. It's just part of human nature, and we've been guilty of practicing it here in the US ever since we killed the native Americans and called them foolish for using only what they needed. The Native Americans only avoided this kind of behavior by deeply ingraining the value of minimialism into their religion and traditions; anything can be accomplished with enough self-discipline (and fear of the gods never hurts either).
In other words, if you want to stop the gradual process of academic discoveries falling into corporate ownership, then you've got to do one of two things.
You convince universities to offer their researchers more money and benefits than corporations do at any given time, so that researchers will always choose not to sell their discoveries to corporate interests. Or you convince all of mankind that they really don't need anything more than the minimum that it takes to live and survive, and that the animal gods will hunt them down and kill them in their sleep if they buy any more Pokemon cards.
Leaks can be damaging to any company. Leaked information about products which have not yet been released generates rumors and informs competitors.
Rumors usually work *against* a company in one of two ways: either they generate undue hype before a product's release, resulting in ludicrously high customer expectations when the product is finally released; or they generate undue criticism of a product before it is finally released. Either way, rumors can drastically damage a new product launch.
And in terms of the competition, letting a competitor know what you are up to is never a helpful policy.
Microsoft's removal of true DOS mode from WinMe is just a response to customer demand. A large majority of technical support calls were from people who didn't understand MS-DOS, TSR drivers, CONFIG.SYS commands, etc. By removing the ability to add anything other than PATH statements to AUTOEXEC.BAT/CONFIG.SYS and by removing true DOS mode, Microsoft has immediately eliminated all customer complaints and issues related to poor understanding of DOS mode and proper DOS configuration.
Microsoft isn't trying to bar competing OSes from being able to install. Microsoft is just making its own life easier by removing a large opportunity for unsavvy customers to mess something up. Microsoft is also trying to prepare users for a "no DOS mode" mindset, since the next release of Windows for the home consumer market will be based on the Win2000 kernal.
I think there is a little too much paranoia and whining at work within the Slashdot community over this. Remember, Microsoft doesn't have any obligation to remain backward compatible with anything. If you want to keep running true DOS programs (emus, games, demos, etc), then just stick with Win98 or earlier, or set up a dual-boot system that has a real copy of DOS 6.22 on a separate partition from WinMe.
This has happened to me from time to time, not just with computer programming but with mathematics, physics, mech-eng, etc. The problem is always that I have gotten so locked up into the inner details of something technical that I lost the bigger picture and end up feeling confused. The best thing to do is as others have already suggested: step away for a brief period, and then when you come back to it, think in terms of general conceptual approach before going back into details. Make sure you know what you are trying to accomplish and why, and then flesh out a more concrete, detailed plan. By the time you actually get around to writing up the code, you should already have it block-diagrammed or pseudo-coded to the point that you're just implementing a clear picture.
People who claim that men and women naturally have identical mental tendencies, and that any aparent differences are due only to societal pressures, are way off the mark.
Humans and other animals are an advanced result of evolution. We have behaviors and tendencies which have guided and resulted from our survival, and these ingrained behaviors are more predominant in us than we would like to admit. Most people like to think that they have severely advanced intellects compared to cats and dogs, and that this intellect allows us to live our lives rationally instead of being bound to silly evolved behavior patterns and tendencies. People who think that are fooling themselves.
That said, women are by nature more caring, affectionate, and emotional. Not ALL women, just MOST. (Statistics demonstrate this time and time again, and this natural gender difference is just as evident in numerous non-human species on this planet that don't have mainstream media affecting their lives.)
As a result, most women either (1) can't understand and/or (2) strongly dislike people who take a logical, problem-solving approach to everything in life.
I've experienced this with my current girlfriend. We love and respect each other, but she can't understand my approach to things, I can't understand hers. This leads to mutual frustration and annoyance.
For example, when she is having an emotional crisis over some kind of problem, my solution is to suggest concrete steps she could take to tackle the problematic scenario and solve it, but what she wants is for me to hold her and tell her everything will be okay, without suggesting anything to actually solve the problem. She can't understand why I always approach things logically, while I can't understand why she won't.
Most men tend to have analytical and problem-solving minds as a result of evolution. Women are equally capable of analytical thought, but most of them simply dislike doing it by nature.
Most women don't dislike geek guys because of appearances or an affinity for computers. Most women dislike them because they are analytical problem-solvers in everything they do. It drives most women crazy that guys try to spread jam on their toast as evenly as possible to maximize the flavor potential. It drives most women crazy that guys try to maximize their savings over time by limiting their entertainment expenses. It drives most women crazy that guys think solving a difficult mental puzzle is more important than dressing attractively. It drives most women crazy that guys would rather fix something themselves than get someone else to deal with it.
And it drives most women crazy to think that they might have to put forth the effort to learn something incredibly difficult, such as a scientific or engineering discipline, or deal with anything in an analytical way. Their thinking is "Why should we do that icky stuff when there are other people (i.e. geek guys) to take care of it for us?"
Your argument validating the USPTO is the same argument given to me by my manager here at Microsoft. You are both wrong for one fundamental reason: it costs HUGE sums of money to defend yourself or your startup company against a patent infringement suit from a large company. This causes numerous small companies and individuals to either not challenge bogus patents in the first place, or to go bankrupt defending against them.
One prime example is Aureal. They had to defend themselves against Creative Labs' patent infringement suit. Although Aureal prevailed in the courtroom, their defense drained them financially and the company is now close to bankrupcy. Where was the justice in this case?
What about AKIRA and Ghost In The Shell?
on
Essential Anime
·
· Score: 1
You also have to have a good underlying system architecture. The real keys to a good system (and GUI) are simplicity, consistency, and clear organization. Linux (like many UNIXes) and the open-source GUIs generally lack most of these aspects.
I've used BeOS, Linux, Solaris, Win9x, NT, and Win2k. The Windows OS's and BeOS are the only ones with reasonably well-organized underlying filesystems. The various UNIX-like OS's usually have chaotic, inconsistent filesystems which necessitate all kinds of low-level knowledge on the user's part just to install and configure new applications.
It's also absolutely ludicrous that many UNIX apps actually compile hard-coded directory and file paths into the binary executables. Look at GCC, for instance... if you compile it and then move it to a different directory and update your environment variables, it still won't run until you create symbolic links in the old binary locations, because many directory paths were built into the binary. How stupid! No binary should ever have paths hardcoded into it. It should instead look at an environment variable to get the path it needs. It's not as if Linux has that 640k memory limit under which all environment space must fit... so why are OSS software developers so hesitant to use environment variables when it's the smart thing to do?
I've used KDE, GNOME, and the Windows interfaces. The reason Windows is winning in the marketplace is because it's the only one with a consistent enough interface that the interface generally doesn't get in the way of the task at hand. You can move from one Windows PC to another, regardless of whether it's Win95, Win98, Win2k, or NT 4.0, and start using typical applications immediately without having to relearn a new desktop. Although users can customize the Windows desktop, the permitted customizations are kept minimal enough that it doesn't alter the basic functionality of Windows UI or the basic appearance of all the widgets. This enforced consistency is what gives Windows such a usability advantage. Windows isn't such a great interface, it's just a consistent one.
If the open-source community wants to create a better GUI, the way to start is by remembering simplicity, organization, and consistency. Come up with a very small base set of widgets (pushbuttons, scroll UIs (think of alternatives to scrollbars), selectors/radio buttons, text entry spots, static text for display, bitmaps, rectangular regions which can house other controls), and then use those to build small base sets of dialogs and "wizards". Then enforce that all apps *must* use those basic widgets, dialogs, and wizards, without violating and creating their own custom crap. Strive for consistency: all windows in the GUI must have the same basic elements, all shortcut keys must be the same in all apps, copy and paste should work from any window to any other window in the same way, text selection should always work the same way, menus should always be arranged the same way, blah.
Notice that the key to everything in the above paragraph is "enforcement". At some point you have to abandon this "natural selection" theory of software development and instead enforce consistency, simplicity, and organization. It's the only way to end up with something usable.
The real solution is to make unsolicited commercial communications of any kind (e-mail, telephone, television) a federal crime punishable by the death penalty. Then the world would be a much happier place, and we would simultaneously reduce the world's population and raise the average IQ level.
There is nothing wrong with a company wanting to protect its intellectual property from being copied or otherwise tampered with. The MPAA and the companies involved in these DeCSS legal matters are within their right to prosecute violations of their intellectual property rights.
That said, DeCSS is not a DVD copying program. Xing (that's the rumor I keep hearing) is the company responsible for the first in a series of events which led to the creation of DeCSS. I think it is very bad judgement on the part of the prosecution to target teenage programmers in an attempt to make examples of them. Instead, these companies should be going after Xing for being careless in their product implementation. After all, Xing surely has deeper pockets and more potential impact on the industry than a small handful of teenage programmers and web site operators do.
Yes, from the open-source community's perspective, it sucks that DVD and CSS are not open standards. But the open-source community needs to learn that it isn't right (or wise) to just go around "breaking open" closed standards without permission.
Did anyone in the open-source community try approaching the MPAA or whatever organization(s) bear responsibility for the DVD/CSS standards, to see if they could work cooperatively and peacefully on Linux support for DVD playback? If so, they should be praised for taking the right approach. Even if the MPAA (or responsible organization(s)) denied the open-source community access to this information, that still doesn't make it right to go and "break open" the closed standards.
The people who took advantage of the information they saw in the carelessly-implemented Xing product, and who sidestepped negotiations with the industry entirely, do deserve punishment. They knowingly and willingly violated intellectual property rights and trade secrets.
Still, I believe that they do not deserve to have their homes raided, their equipment needlessly confiscated, and their lives potentially ruined. They didn't murder anyone, they didn't benefit financially from their acts, and they didn't even make a small dent in the industry's incredibly ludicrous daily revenue. Give them probation or community service, or fine them some large (but not life-threatening) sum of money, and then let them go as your point has been made.
1 company + 1 means of communication = VERY BAD!
on
AOL Nation
·
· Score: 1
I don't know what's scarier: the proposed AOL-TW merger, or the fact that Katz is actually right for a change.
The problem here is that AOL-TW are trying to get away with controlling a means of mass-communication.
The reason the Internet is so cool is that it's available to anyone with the know-how and the money (buy a computer, register a domain name, publish your own web site). The Internet isn't owned by anyone, and no single entity can completely bar me as an individual from getting access to the net. I can publish on it and access it through a variety of different providers and companies.
With AOL-TW, we will have an arrangement that is much like the cable companies, only worse. Corporate control of an entire means of mass-communication, this time by a single company rather than a few companies. If Joe Schmoe living in his parent's basement comes up with a cool idea for a show about some obscure topic, he can't just do his own show and put it onto the cable networks. He has to be "accepted" by the stupid social group--the social group of $$$ greed--that runs the cable networks. Chances are that we'll never really see a "Wayne's World" on cable TV, but we see tons of personal home pages and opinion sites and fan sites and hobbiest sites all over the Internet.
If AOL-TW gets away with their merger and slowly converts the majority of Internet users over to their higher-speed, easier-access, easier-to-use service offerings, then it will literally suck the life out of the Internet. Most people won't be using the Internet anymore, they'll be using AOL-TW. And that will make AOL-TW's service and connectivity the standard. Everyone will want to be able to "publish" and be heard on that standard, but only companies with tons of money and motives that fall in line with AOL-TW's will be allowed to "publish" on it. And THAT is the scary part here, people... the thought that in the future, the mainstream computer network will NOT be open-entry for everyone, but instead will be "read-only" for the masses, controlled by a single company.
In any other industry, this AOL-TW deal would immediately be recognized by the government as a monopolistic move. But I'm afraid that won't happen here, just because the people in the government just don't recognize that AOL-TW are *trying* to set themselves up in a monopoly position.
I'm scared for the future. Don't take your Internet days for granted kiddies, because they may be gone and replaced by something awful in not too many years...
But what you forget is that introvert shy coders wouldn't be out socializing and doing other things even if they weren't coders. They would be burying their noses in books and academia, or they would be musicians or artists working and studying in isolation. Before computers were around, there were plenty of artistic, intelligent, but very anti-social men around. Computer programming is just one of the newer activities which appeals to these kinds of people. Indeed, these kinds of people do tend to be extremely good at what they do. And although you consider it a loss to not have a more well-rounded life, these people clearly don't. The value of having a well-rounded life is, like everything else, relative. To you it is extremely valuable to have a well-rounded life, but to other people it may not be of any value at all. Just depends on who you are and what you think is important and/or enjoyable to do with your life.
Steve, I consider your greatest characteristic to be your down-to-earth mindset. You had the idea during a time when all big corporations completely failed to understand the needs and potential of the home user marketplace that the key was to cater precisly to that demographic. You took a chance that corporations weren't willing to take because you believed your ideas were right and that you genuinely understood what real people wanted.
It seems that the biggest problem with computers today is with the unreliability of most commercial software. I personally believe that if a company took an entire year of development time to refine and bugfix a product instead of spending that time adding more features then real people would actually be more inclined to buy a reliable product than a bloated buggy one with unnecessary features. However, this is just my personal belief, and it is a big risk that corporations don't seem interested in taking.
Do you believe that there is an unfulfilled yet lucrative opportunity available for software companies to utilize by working on making their software more stable, smaller, and faster, rather than adding more feature? If so, is it just going to take a risk-taking startup venture by a couple people working out of their home to prove to the big corporations that it will work? Or do you think that big corporations will eventually figure this out on their own? What kind of an advertising and marketing strategy do you think would be needed to communicate to real people the fact that your company's product was better due to being more smaller, faster, and more reliable?
Clearly, the industry is enjoying monumental success -- indeed, their highest success ever -- even though they don't serve you as a customer.
That's only because most people out there in the world still don't even have computers at home, and thus don't have access to Napster or other Internet-based methods of piracy. Therefore the only way they are able to get the couple of songs they want is to buy the entire album.
Do you feel expendable yet? The industry doesn't need you. By definition, there is no money to be made off of 'obscure material'.
That's exactly the kind of short-sighted attitude that the record industry has, and it's the only thing standing between them and enormous profits. Just because something is not produced in huge quantities, that does not mean that it should be difficult for the people who want that material to find it. If the record industry were to leverage the power of the Internet to easily put small, cultish groups of people in touch with the various obscure materials they wished to purchase, the net result would be probably a doubling or tripling of their earnings, without having to produce any of the obscure material in increased quantities. It's all an issue of putting buyers in touch with goods being sold. However, most record company execs still suffer from the same lack of foresight that you do.
They do not need to cater to you at all, and can make much more money catering to their core audience.
Their core audience is composed of mindless zombies who gladly eat up whatever the radio stations define as popular via their repetitive playlists. But there's tremendous potential to expand into markets of other music listeners. In fact, that's the only direction left for revenue growth, once they've already raped the wallets of "core audience" consumers. The fact that the record industry fails to see this just goes to show you that there is a huge, gaping opportunity for some start-up company to strike it rich by providing the kind of service I've been describing.
Do you see who's in charge now?
Yes--I am, because I am finding all the specific music I want for free on the Internet. Guess who's losing? (Hint: it's not me, and it rhymes with "checkered ministry").
Actually, record companies think they are in charge, but they're beginning to discover that they're really not. The customer is still in charge and has been all along.
If I only like two songs on a $15 album, I have no legal choices other than (a) don't buy any of the songs, or (b) buy all the songs. But neither of those choices is what I want, so I turn to piracy. That is how I continue to be in charge of the situation.
I'm not going to stop satisfying my own needs just because some unethical law says I shouldn't. So if the record industry wants to get any of my money, they had better start bending to my specific needs as a consumer by providing a way for me to purchase only the individual songs I want, and to easily obtain legitimate copies of obscure material.
What all businesses need to learn--and eventually are forced to--is that the customer ultimately is in charge. You might be able to survive for a handful of years on venture capital or corporate wealth while you fuck over your customers, but be assured that you will eventually go out of business. Sometimes this process takes a long time and can feel frustrating to consumers who know they are being wronged, but it really does work.
I think our 'instant availability' society is the cause. They know I can give then a simplified, concise answer in seconds, while referring to the manual may cut into their coffee break and actually require them learning something! They may flip through the manual, perhaps looking at the index and actually finding that the manual has relevent information. But they never seem to read it. It's people like you who completely disappoint me. If you can give a simplified, concise answer in seconds, then why can't the author of the manual give a simplified, concise answer in two sentences? But no... the authors of technical documentation seem to expect their readers to already have an advanced level of general technical know-how. It's no wonder that new users bitch about Linux documentation. Start writing docs using a "simplified, concise approach", just as you would if you were sitting face-to-face with a newbie, and then you'll miraculously find that newbies may actually get some use out of the documentation and start getting comfortable with reading information for themselves!
Mr. Gates, Microsoft is a business, and the primary goal of any business is to make money. However, your personal interest and enthusiasm about technology means that Microsoft is also strongly geared toward progress and technical advancement as an end goal.
People who support the capitalist economic model would claim that it's a good thing for Microsot to be so profit-driven, because the profits that MS makes represent happy customers. But there is a growing anti-Microsoft sentiment outside of Redmond, composed not only of open-source enthusiasts but average users as well, who claim that profits and user satisfaction are not correlated closely enough, and that Microsoft is simply ignoring the desires of users by focusing so closely on profits.
What argument would you make to convince those disgruntled users that the profit-driven corporate business model is actually the best way to produce software and satisfy users? Have you or others in the company considered trying out a small open-source project (maybe a game or a small tool or something independent from Windows or Office, etc) to see what the pros and cons of that development method might be?
I'm a developer at M$, and I've watched the Linux community for a couple of years now too. It seems that the corporate and open-source development models have at least one flaw in common: insufficient documentation. All too often one finds a section of code that is not commented in-line worth a damn, and there is no thorough "architectural overview" of the project to even help clue you in. So to address the question, "What if so-and-so gets hit by a stampeding buffalo?", let's first address a larger issue: how can we get people up-to-speed on development projects more easily? The answer is to simply shift our philosophical viewpoint. We should place correctness, thoroughness, and efficiency of _documentation_ on the same priority level as correctness, thoroughness, and efficiency of _code_. Then you don't have to worry about a project dying just because a few key people left and took all the knowledge with them! This means commenting (in the code) the purpose and inner functioning of every function so that a newcomer can immediately see what the function does, why it gets called (and from where), and how it works inside. This means modifying your original design specs as you go along to reflect what is actually happening in the project as it takes shape, so that at the end of the project you have a complete architectural overview that one could read to easily see how the project fits together.
Slashdot Mirror
The issue here isn't even about free speech; it's about reverse engineering.
It is NOT illegal (even by the DMCA, as I understand it) to reverse-engineer an encryption scheme for the intent of playing the content on an alternate player device. It is only illegal to reverse-engineer an encryption scheme if the intent is to permit copying. Again, IANAL, so correct me if I'm wrong.
So, the defense's job should be to prove three
points beyond a reasonable doubt:
- That 2600 thoroughly investigated the
potential illegality of the content of
the DeCSS code before reposting it.
- That to the best of 2600's knowledge, the
purpose of DeCSS was not to copy discs but
to permit playback on Linux, so they could
only believe it was not a violation of any
law to repost the code.
- That to the best of 2600's knowledge, DeCSS
was written using legal reverse-engineering
technique, again meaning that DeCSS was not
illegal to their knowledge and thus reposting
the code was not illegal either.
If certain content is deemed classified, a corporate secret, an improperly reverse-engineered implementation, or is somehow otherwise illegal, then it is a publisher's duty to investigate the legality of that content before publishing it. As long as 2600 reviewed the content, reviewed the law, and saw nothing to indicate that the content was problematic, then they should not be held responsible for reposting the code. And until a court of law judges that DeCSS itself is indeed a violation of some kind of law, 2600 (and any other publication) should be free to continue reposting the code.
Unforunately, the majority of the public IS unbelievably stupid--just look at how many of them fall for FUD, think George W. Bush or Al Gore are great people, can't be bothered to learn to program their VCRs, believe in horoscopes, and don't even know what the electoral college is. Those of us who actually AREN'T unbelievably stupid feel offended (as we ought to!) when people assume we are all stupid; however, the majority of people in the world ARE unbelievably stupid so it comes as no surprise to me that there are no public uproars over genuinely important issues, numerous public uproars over hyped non-issues, and general fear and paranoia about anything new.
There are many smart postings that blow this guy's argument away, but they won't be read by the business people who read his column. If you want to enlighten the right people, send e-mail to the journal that published it, or submit your own column in response. Be polite, and provide undeniable factual evidence (not loyalist statements of grandeur) to knock down his argument.
Don't assume that this journal is techno-savvy; they may not pay respect to e-mails, so send them hard copies and faxes as well.
Slashdot isn't required reading for business people and politicians, so we've got to carry these threads out to the public. Debating among ourselves may be fun for us, but it doesn't educate the general population.
I work for Microsoft and I frequently work from home over DSL via a VPN connection. Does this mean that @Home users who want to connect via VPN to their offices to do work will now be prohibited from doing so? I can't imagine this will help the @Home business, since most people I know who have broadband are only willing to fork out the money because they have some business-related need for it.
People need to be motivated in order to produce, and people will direct their efforts toward satisfying their highest-priority motivations.
Remember the triangular diagram of a human being's needs that many of us were taught in gradeschool? Humans have a desire for food, clothing and shelter, sex and relationships, entertainment, and THEN maybe below all those lies the need to do noble things such as contribute to humankind.
In fact, for most people, the basic needs are NEVER "met"... people just keep wanting more and more and MORE of the same crap, even when it's obvious that they've already got more than they need. It's just part of human nature, and we've been guilty of practicing it here in the US ever since we killed the native Americans and called them foolish for using only what they needed. The Native Americans only avoided this kind of behavior by deeply ingraining the value of minimialism into their religion and traditions; anything can be accomplished with enough self-discipline (and fear of the gods never hurts either).
In other words, if you want to stop the gradual process of academic discoveries falling into corporate ownership, then you've got to do one of two things.
You convince universities to offer their researchers more money and benefits than corporations do at any given time, so that researchers will always choose not to sell their discoveries to corporate interests. Or you convince all of mankind that they really don't need anything more than the minimum that it takes to live and survive, and that the animal gods will hunt them down and kill them in their sleep if they buy any more Pokemon cards.
In other words, good fscking luck.
Leaks can be damaging to any company. Leaked information about products which have not yet been released generates rumors and informs competitors.
Rumors usually work *against* a company in one of two ways: either they generate undue hype before a product's release, resulting in ludicrously high customer expectations when the product is finally released; or they generate undue criticism of a product before it is finally released. Either way, rumors can drastically damage a new product launch.
And in terms of the competition, letting a competitor know what you are up to is never a helpful policy.
- Keith
Microsoft's removal of true DOS mode from WinMe is just a response to customer demand. A large majority of technical support calls were from people who didn't understand MS-DOS, TSR drivers, CONFIG.SYS commands, etc. By removing the ability to add anything other than PATH statements to AUTOEXEC.BAT/CONFIG.SYS and by removing true DOS mode, Microsoft has immediately eliminated all customer complaints and issues related to poor understanding of DOS mode and proper DOS configuration.
Microsoft isn't trying to bar competing OSes from being able to install. Microsoft is just making its own life easier by removing a large opportunity for unsavvy customers to mess something up. Microsoft is also trying to prepare users for a "no DOS mode" mindset, since the next release of Windows for the home consumer market will be based on the Win2000 kernal.
I think there is a little too much paranoia and whining at work within the Slashdot community over this. Remember, Microsoft doesn't have any obligation to remain backward compatible with anything. If you want to keep running true DOS programs (emus, games, demos, etc), then just stick with Win98 or earlier, or set up a dual-boot system that has a real copy of DOS 6.22 on a separate partition from WinMe.
This has happened to me from time to time, not just with computer programming but with mathematics, physics, mech-eng, etc. The problem is always that I have gotten so locked up into the inner details of something technical that I lost the bigger picture and end up feeling confused. The best thing to do is as others have already suggested: step away for a brief period, and then when you come back to it, think in terms of general conceptual approach before going back into details. Make sure you know what you are trying to accomplish and why, and then flesh out a more concrete, detailed plan. By the time you actually get around to writing up the code, you should already have it block-diagrammed or pseudo-coded to the point that you're just implementing a clear picture.
People who claim that men and women naturally have identical mental tendencies, and that any aparent differences are due only to societal pressures, are way off the mark.
Humans and other animals are an advanced result of evolution. We have behaviors and tendencies which have guided and resulted from our survival, and these ingrained behaviors are more predominant in us than we would like to admit. Most people like to think that they have severely advanced intellects compared to cats and dogs, and that this intellect allows us to live our lives rationally instead of being bound to silly evolved behavior patterns and tendencies. People who think that are fooling themselves.
That said, women are by nature more caring, affectionate, and emotional. Not ALL women, just MOST. (Statistics demonstrate this time and time again, and this natural gender difference is just as evident in numerous non-human species on this planet that don't have mainstream media affecting their lives.)
As a result, most women either (1) can't understand and/or (2) strongly dislike people who take a logical, problem-solving approach to everything in life.
I've experienced this with my current girlfriend. We love and respect each other, but she can't understand my approach to things, I can't understand hers. This leads to mutual frustration and annoyance.
For example, when she is having an emotional crisis over some kind of problem, my solution is to suggest concrete steps she could take to tackle the problematic scenario and solve it, but what she wants is for me to hold her and tell her everything will be okay, without suggesting anything to actually solve the problem. She can't understand why I always approach things logically, while I can't understand why she won't.
Most men tend to have analytical and problem-solving minds as a result of evolution. Women are equally capable of analytical thought, but most of them simply dislike doing it by nature.
Most women don't dislike geek guys because of appearances or an affinity for computers. Most women dislike them because they are analytical problem-solvers in everything they do. It drives most women crazy that guys try to spread jam on their toast as evenly as possible to maximize the flavor potential. It drives most women crazy that guys try to maximize their savings over time by limiting their entertainment expenses. It drives most women crazy that guys think solving a difficult mental puzzle is more important than dressing attractively. It drives most women crazy that guys would rather fix something themselves than get someone else to deal with it.
And it drives most women crazy to think that they might have to put forth the effort to learn something incredibly difficult, such as a scientific or engineering discipline, or deal with anything in an analytical way. Their thinking is "Why should we do that icky stuff when there are other people (i.e. geek guys) to take care of it for us?"
Seeing the trend?
Your argument validating the USPTO is the same argument given to me by my manager here at Microsoft. You are both wrong for one fundamental reason: it costs HUGE sums of money to defend yourself or your startup company against a patent infringement suit from a large company. This causes numerous small companies and individuals to either not challenge bogus patents in the first place, or to go bankrupt defending against them.
One prime example is Aureal. They had to defend themselves against Creative Labs' patent infringement suit. Although Aureal prevailed in the courtroom, their defense drained them financially and the company is now close to bankrupcy. Where was the justice in this case?
These are two of the greatest Anime flicks, IMHO.
You also have to have a good underlying system architecture. The real keys to a good system (and GUI) are simplicity, consistency, and clear organization. Linux (like many UNIXes) and the open-source GUIs generally lack most of these aspects.
I've used BeOS, Linux, Solaris, Win9x, NT, and Win2k. The Windows OS's and BeOS are the only ones with reasonably well-organized underlying filesystems. The various UNIX-like OS's usually have chaotic, inconsistent filesystems which necessitate all kinds of low-level knowledge on the user's part just to install and configure new applications.
It's also absolutely ludicrous that many UNIX apps actually compile hard-coded directory and file paths into the binary executables. Look at GCC, for instance... if you compile it and then move it to a different directory and update your environment variables, it still won't run until you create symbolic links in the old binary locations, because many directory paths were built into the binary. How stupid! No binary should ever have paths hardcoded into it. It should instead look at an environment variable to get the path it needs. It's not as if Linux has that 640k memory limit under which all environment space must fit... so why are OSS software developers so hesitant to use environment variables when it's the smart thing to do?
I've used KDE, GNOME, and the Windows interfaces. The reason Windows is winning in the marketplace is because it's the only one with a consistent enough interface that the interface generally doesn't get in the way of the task at hand. You can move from one Windows PC to another, regardless of whether it's Win95, Win98, Win2k, or NT 4.0, and start using typical applications immediately without having to relearn a new desktop. Although users can customize the Windows desktop, the permitted customizations are kept minimal enough that it doesn't alter the basic functionality of Windows UI or the basic appearance of all the widgets. This enforced consistency is what gives Windows such a usability advantage. Windows isn't such a great interface, it's just a consistent one.
If the open-source community wants to create a better GUI, the way to start is by remembering simplicity, organization, and consistency. Come up with a very small base set of widgets (pushbuttons, scroll UIs (think of alternatives to scrollbars), selectors/radio buttons, text entry spots, static text for display, bitmaps, rectangular regions which can house other controls), and then use those to build small base sets of dialogs and "wizards". Then enforce that all apps *must* use those basic widgets, dialogs, and wizards, without violating and creating their own custom crap. Strive for consistency: all windows in the GUI must have the same basic elements, all shortcut keys must be the same in all apps, copy and paste should work from any window to any other window in the same way, text selection should always work the same way, menus should always be arranged the same way, blah.
Notice that the key to everything in the above paragraph is "enforcement". At some point you have to abandon this "natural selection" theory of software development and instead enforce consistency, simplicity, and organization. It's the only way to end up with something usable.
The real solution is to make unsolicited commercial communications of any kind (e-mail, telephone, television) a federal crime punishable by the death penalty. Then the world would be a much happier place, and we would simultaneously reduce the world's population and raise the average IQ level.
There is nothing wrong with a company wanting to protect its intellectual property from being copied or otherwise tampered with. The MPAA and the companies involved in these DeCSS legal matters are within their right to prosecute violations of their intellectual property rights.
That said, DeCSS is not a DVD copying program. Xing (that's the rumor I keep hearing) is the company responsible for the first in a series of events which led to the creation of DeCSS. I think it is very bad judgement on the part of the prosecution to target teenage programmers in an attempt to make examples of them. Instead, these companies should be going after Xing for being careless in their product implementation. After all, Xing surely has deeper pockets and more potential impact on the industry than a small handful of teenage programmers and web site operators do.
Yes, from the open-source community's perspective, it sucks that DVD and CSS are not open standards. But the open-source community needs to learn that it isn't right (or wise) to just go around "breaking open" closed standards without permission.
Did anyone in the open-source community try approaching the MPAA or whatever organization(s) bear responsibility for the DVD/CSS standards, to see if they could work cooperatively and peacefully on Linux support for DVD playback? If so, they should be praised for taking the right approach. Even if the MPAA (or responsible organization(s)) denied the open-source community access to this information, that still doesn't make it right to go and "break open" the closed standards.
The people who took advantage of the information they saw in the carelessly-implemented Xing product, and who sidestepped negotiations with the industry entirely, do deserve punishment. They knowingly and willingly violated intellectual property rights and trade secrets.
Still, I believe that they do not deserve to have their homes raided, their equipment needlessly confiscated, and their lives potentially ruined. They didn't murder anyone, they didn't benefit financially from their acts, and they didn't even make a small dent in the industry's incredibly ludicrous daily revenue. Give them probation or community service, or fine them some large (but not life-threatening) sum of money, and then let them go as your point has been made.
I don't know what's scarier: the proposed AOL-TW merger, or the fact that Katz is actually right for a change.
The problem here is that AOL-TW are trying to get away with controlling a means of mass-communication.
The reason the Internet is so cool is that it's available to anyone with the know-how and the money (buy a computer, register a domain name, publish your own web site). The Internet isn't owned by anyone, and no single entity can completely bar me as an individual from getting access to the net. I can publish on it and access it through a variety of different providers and companies.
With AOL-TW, we will have an arrangement that is much like the cable companies, only worse. Corporate control of an entire means of mass-communication, this time by a single company rather than a few companies. If Joe Schmoe living in his parent's basement comes up with a cool idea for a show about some obscure topic, he can't just do his own show and put it onto the cable networks. He has to be "accepted" by the stupid social group--the social group of $$$ greed--that runs the cable networks. Chances are that we'll never really see a "Wayne's World" on cable TV, but we see tons of personal home pages and opinion sites and fan sites and hobbiest sites all over the Internet.
If AOL-TW gets away with their merger and slowly converts the majority of Internet users over to their higher-speed, easier-access, easier-to-use service offerings, then it will literally suck the life out of the Internet. Most people won't be using the Internet anymore, they'll be using AOL-TW. And that will make AOL-TW's service and connectivity the standard. Everyone will want to be able to "publish" and be heard on that standard, but only companies with tons of money and motives that fall in line with AOL-TW's will be allowed to "publish" on it. And THAT is the scary part here, people... the thought that in the future, the mainstream computer network will NOT be open-entry for everyone, but instead will be "read-only" for the masses, controlled by a single company.
In any other industry, this AOL-TW deal would immediately be recognized by the government as a monopolistic move. But I'm afraid that won't happen here, just because the people in the government just don't recognize that AOL-TW are *trying* to set themselves up in a monopoly position.
I'm scared for the future. Don't take your Internet days for granted kiddies, because they may be gone and replaced by something awful in not too many years...
But what you forget is that introvert shy coders wouldn't be out socializing and doing other things even if they weren't coders. They would be burying their noses in books and academia, or they would be musicians or artists working and studying in isolation. Before computers were around, there were plenty of artistic, intelligent, but very anti-social men around. Computer programming is just one of the newer activities which appeals to these kinds of people. Indeed, these kinds of people do tend to be extremely good at what they do. And although you consider it a loss to not have a more well-rounded life, these people clearly don't. The value of having a well-rounded life is, like everything else, relative. To you it is extremely valuable to have a well-rounded life, but to other people it may not be of any value at all. Just depends on who you are and what you think is important and/or enjoyable to do with your life.
Steve, I consider your greatest characteristic to be your down-to-earth mindset. You had the idea during a time when all big corporations completely failed to understand the needs and potential of the home user marketplace that the key was to cater precisly to that demographic. You took a chance that corporations weren't willing to take because you believed your ideas were right and that you genuinely understood what real people wanted.
It seems that the biggest problem with computers today is with the unreliability of most commercial software. I personally believe that if a company took an entire year of development time to refine and bugfix a product instead of spending that time adding more features then real people would actually be more inclined to buy a reliable product than a bloated buggy one with unnecessary features. However, this is just my personal belief, and it is a big risk that corporations don't seem interested in taking.
Do you believe that there is an unfulfilled yet lucrative opportunity available for software companies to utilize by working on making their software more stable, smaller, and faster, rather than adding more feature? If so, is it just going to take a risk-taking startup venture by a couple people working out of their home to prove to the big corporations that it will work? Or do you think that big corporations will eventually figure this out on their own? What kind of an advertising and marketing strategy do you think would be needed to communicate to real people the fact that your company's product was better due to being more smaller, faster, and more reliable?
Clearly, the industry is enjoying monumental success -- indeed, their highest success ever -- even though they don't serve you as a customer.
That's only because most people out there in the world still don't even have computers at home, and thus don't have access to Napster or other Internet-based methods of piracy. Therefore the only way they are able to get the couple of songs they want is to buy the entire album.
Do you feel expendable yet? The industry doesn't need you. By definition, there is no money to be made off of 'obscure material'.
That's exactly the kind of short-sighted attitude that the record industry has, and it's the only thing standing between them and enormous profits. Just because something is not produced in huge quantities, that does not mean that it should be difficult for the people who want that material to find it. If the record industry were to leverage the power of the Internet to easily put small, cultish groups of people in touch with the various obscure materials they wished to purchase, the net result would be probably a doubling or tripling of their earnings, without having to produce any of the obscure material in increased quantities. It's all an issue of putting buyers in touch with goods being sold. However, most record company execs still suffer from the same lack of foresight that you do.
They do not need to cater to you at all, and can make much more money catering to their core audience.
Their core audience is composed of mindless zombies who gladly eat up whatever the radio stations define as popular via their repetitive playlists. But there's tremendous potential to expand into markets of other music listeners. In fact, that's the only direction left for revenue growth, once they've already raped the wallets of "core audience" consumers. The fact that the record industry fails to see this just goes to show you that there is a huge, gaping opportunity for some start-up company to strike it rich by providing the kind of service I've been describing.
Do you see who's in charge now?
Yes--I am, because I am finding all the specific music I want for free on the Internet. Guess who's losing? (Hint: it's not me, and it rhymes with "checkered ministry").
The record companies are in charge. You're not.
Actually, record companies think they are in charge, but they're beginning to discover that they're really not. The customer is still in charge and has been all along.
If I only like two songs on a $15 album, I have no legal choices other than (a) don't buy any of the songs, or (b) buy all the songs. But neither of those choices is what I want, so I turn to piracy. That is how I continue to be in charge of the situation.
I'm not going to stop satisfying my own needs just because some unethical law says I shouldn't. So if the record industry wants to get any of my money, they had better start bending to my specific needs as a consumer by providing a way for me to purchase only the individual songs I want, and to easily obtain legitimate copies of obscure material.
What all businesses need to learn--and eventually are forced to--is that the customer ultimately is in charge. You might be able to survive for a handful of years on venture capital or corporate wealth while you fuck over your customers, but be assured that you will eventually go out of business. Sometimes this process takes a long time and can feel frustrating to consumers who know they are being wronged, but it really does work.
I think our 'instant availability' society is the cause. They know I can give then a simplified, concise answer in seconds, while referring to the manual may cut into their coffee break and actually require them learning something! They may flip through the manual, perhaps looking at the index and actually finding that the manual has relevent information. But they never seem to read it. It's people like you who completely disappoint me. If you can give a simplified, concise answer in seconds, then why can't the author of the manual give a simplified, concise answer in two sentences? But no... the authors of technical documentation seem to expect their readers to already have an advanced level of general technical know-how. It's no wonder that new users bitch about Linux documentation. Start writing docs using a "simplified, concise approach", just as you would if you were sitting face-to-face with a newbie, and then you'll miraculously find that newbies may actually get some use out of the documentation and start getting comfortable with reading information for themselves!
Mr. Gates, Microsoft is a business, and the primary goal of any business is to make money. However, your personal interest and enthusiasm about technology means that Microsoft is also strongly geared toward progress and technical advancement as an end goal.
People who support the capitalist economic model would claim that it's a good thing for Microsot to be so profit-driven, because the profits that MS makes represent happy customers. But there is a growing anti-Microsoft sentiment outside of Redmond, composed not only of open-source enthusiasts but average users as well, who claim that profits and user satisfaction are not correlated closely enough, and that Microsoft is simply ignoring the desires of users by focusing so closely on profits.
What argument would you make to convince those disgruntled users that the profit-driven corporate business model is actually the best way to produce software and satisfy users? Have you or others in the company considered trying out a small open-source project (maybe a game or a small tool or something independent from Windows or Office, etc) to see what the pros and cons of that development method might be?
I'm a developer at M$, and I've watched the Linux community for a couple of years now too. It seems that the corporate and open-source development models have at least one flaw in common: insufficient documentation. All too often one finds a section of code that is not commented in-line worth a damn, and there is no thorough "architectural overview" of the project to even help clue you in. So to address the question, "What if so-and-so gets hit by a stampeding buffalo?", let's first address a larger issue: how can we get people up-to-speed on development projects more easily? The answer is to simply shift our philosophical viewpoint. We should place correctness, thoroughness, and efficiency of _documentation_ on the same priority level as correctness, thoroughness, and efficiency of _code_. Then you don't have to worry about a project dying just because a few key people left and took all the knowledge with them! This means commenting (in the code) the purpose and inner functioning of every function so that a newcomer can immediately see what the function does, why it gets called (and from where), and how it works inside. This means modifying your original design specs as you go along to reflect what is actually happening in the project as it takes shape, so that at the end of the project you have a complete architectural overview that one could read to easily see how the project fits together.